STILL PUNK AFTER ALL
THESE YEARS
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Tre Cool, Billie Joe Armstrong and Mike Dirnt (click for larger view). |
Engineer Allardyce reports the band’s comfort with the material enabled them to record efficiently. “They’d really done their homework, so they were nailing stuff really quickly,” he says. Last time, he explains, they recorded 30 songs. “So, it was way less focused when we did Nimrod. We just went in, recorded a bunch of songs and sorted out how it all fell together. On this one the guys pretty much had the album mapped out, blueprinted in its entirety.”
Before recording started, Allardyce and executive producer Rob Cavallo had their work cut out for them. Cavallo oversaw the installation
of a new wood floor in the recording room, and Allardyce brought in an API console, as well as some Neve 1073s. “There was an SSL 4000 in there, but it wasn’t something I wanted to record through,” says Allardyce. “I’m not a fan of the older SSLs; we used it to monitor through, but not to record through.”
While Nimrod was recorded to tape, the Warning sessions were tracked right into Pro Tools. “I suppose they just wanted to stay abreast of technology,” explains Allardyce of the band’s choice. “It was the ease of everything, and we tried to speed things along. I’m not convinced that it’s quicker, really; in the long run, you get more options that you can play around with it more.”
Still, even with all the options Pro Tools presents, “it was incredibly fast,” he says, “to the point that we were getting three [drum] tracks a day. That’s pretty quick for these guys; certainly with Nimrod we would spend a day per drum track. On this record we just blew through them within a week.”
Cool’s kit remained consistent, with snares, cymbals and drum tuning being changed only sporadically. Allardyce turned to many of the usual suspects when it came to drum kit microphones: The bass drum got an AKG D-112 and Neumann U47 FET, the snare had a Shure 57 on top and a Sony C-55P on the bottom, and the toms were recorded via AKG C-12As. There was a C-55P on the hi-hat and an AKG 414 on the ride cymbal. Occasionally, Allardyce threw a Neumann KM84 on the hat, too. He used Telefunken 251s as overheads; room mics included 251s on a close room, Neumann M50s farther away, and one M149. They also used a Neumann U87 and several Shure SM57s for cool tones that were compressed room reflections.
Bassist Mike Dirnt had a setup that included three different Mesa/Boogie cabinets—a 4x10, a 2x15 and one with four 10s and a 15, each with its own tone. “Between those three, you could get from a real rich bottom end, to midrange, to click-y, kind of attack-y, bright things,” Allardyce explains. “So, basically we had all three running at the same time, and you could do a blend of what you wanted out of it. That was a bit of departure, but I’m really pleased with how that came out.”
Armstrong’s guitars also received careful attention, especially considering he was playing more acoustic guitars than ever before. “We changed guitars a lot; we played probably 10 different guitars,” Allardyce says. “The different colors come from the different guitars. We had a couple of 4x12 Marshall cabinets; on one we put a Marshall through it, and through the other we put a Fender Bassman. The basic Marshall, Fender Bassman was the sound each time.” The acoustic guitars were either miked with a pair of 251s or went through a direct box or miked at an amp.
Reprinted with permission from
Magazine, December, 2000© 2000, Intertec Publishing, A Primedia Company All Rights Reserved
